The latest critic of the U.S. Air Force’s ambitious — and pricey — plan for an all-stealth fighter fleet is one of the flying branch’s top stealth pilots.

Writing in the Air Force Research Institute’s Air & Space Power Journal, Lt. Col. Christopher Niemi, a former F-22 test pilot who later commanded a frontline squadron of the radar-evading jets, says the Air Force is making a big mistake by buying only the most expensive stealth fighters — namely, the F-22 and the newer F-35.

“Most importantly,” Niemi adds, “the cost of F-22s and F-35s threatens to reduce the size of the Air Force’s fielded fighter fleet to dangerously small numbers, particularly in the current fiscal environment.”

4. It could lead to some kind of global disarmament.

Fewer and fewer soldiers and war-machines. But, as the war in Afghanistan, showed again, you still need massive amounts of those if you want to win a war of aggression.

What are Master-Chiefs and Space-Marines and Battle-Mechs good for, when you can only build and maintain so many of them, because they are too expensive? Defense and deterrence.

If everybody agrees to phase out their military for a small high-tech-army, then, at one point, the armies will be too small to actually WIN a war. ("Damnit, we need more cannon-fodder!")
As Napoleon said, war is about controlling time and space. Well, Afghanistan has too much space to be controlled and having a smaller army will only make war less desirable.